A week-long focus on all things Patient Experience has been organised for staff at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, highlighting the importance of using feedback to improve services and launching a search for champions across wards and departments.

The Patient Relations and Experience Team at Walsall Manor Hospital will be leading next week’s sessions that will include interactive engagement events open to all staff across the organisation.

Patient Experience Manager Andrew Rice, said: “We are really looking forward to our special event where we’ll be giving wards and departments the opportunity to share their success stories and find out how we can work together to better respond to feedback and ensure our patients’ voices are being heard.

“We have a theme for each day starting on Monday with Understanding Patient Experience Feedback, moving on to What are you doing for Patient Experience? Patient Experience Patient Champions, Increasing Patient

Engagement and closing with a Patient Experience Walking Fair. The fair will be held near to Costa Coffee in the hospital and will give staff the chance to find out more about the work of Patient Experience, Patient Relations, Volunteering, Interpreting and Translation, Chaplaincy, Bereavement, Learning Matters and our Well Wishers charity.

“During the week we will hold a launch event for Patient Experience Champions and Patient Involvement Partners and we are also going to be introducing a Mystery Patient Scheme where patients can give us their feedback and ideas anonymously if they wish to.

“Our aim is to encourage staff to join the conversation and understand further how important patient experience is at the hospital and in the NHS, how to use patient experience to improve the services we deliver, how to maximise the information we learn through the Friends and Family Test and fully appreciate the link between patient experience and better clinical outcomes.”